Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is a 2D beat ‘em up in where you and up to three friends take control of one of four playable characters, on their quests to save dinosaurs. To accomplish this you beat the heck out of both poachers and dinosaurs alike. While it is undoubtedly awesome to punch a T-rex into submission, they do take a back seat and most of your time will be spent fighting the poachers/gang members across a multitude of environments. There is an evil scientist you must defeat but other than that I had no clue what was going on and I assume you have to read the comic this game was based on to understand. Not that it matters much in this genre where you go around beating anything that moves. The four different characters all feel pretty similar to one another. They all have a unique special attack that occurs when you press both the jump and attack button simultaneously as well as a unique running attack. All of them harm the enemies both in front and behind you and the biggest difference between them is your character shouting the name of that attack. It does take away some of your life for each use so relying on it can be the death of you.
To fight your enemies you will be able to use a variety of weapons ranging from a simple rock to automatic guns. Many enemies also carry guns but hardly ever use them, making the fights more up-close and personal, even though it does look rather weird for a poacher with a rifle to walk toward you in an attempt to smack you with the rifle instead of shooting you. Regardless of your character you will not be able to withstand much damage and will need to fill up with some food items to restore your health. Getting your hands on a gun will make you feel unstoppable as long as you have ammo and when you run out you will be able to throw your gun at an enemies face or use your rifle like a club. Funnily enough you will be able to shoot the dinosaurs you are there to save in the face with a shotgun however once their health bar depletes they will just scurry off. Dinosaurs kind of take a back seat in this game and most of your time will be spent fighting humans while dinos just seem to make a short appearance from time to time. The same goes for the Cadillac part of this title. You drive it around for a very short while and it is never seen again.
Human enemies are colorfully dressed and love to fight with weapons. Dinosaurs are total push overs and you should easily be able to wipe the floor with them. There will be tons of enemies on screen, giving you plenty of foes to fight if you are playing with other people but not enough to make it feel cheap if you are going at it solo. Repetition does start to set in rather fast unfortunately and that is mostly due to the environments being rather dull. It consists of a city level, forest, desert, garage and mines. The forest levels are rather cool as they have plenty of colors and dinosaurs but the others lack colors or anything memorable about them. It is not a game breaker but with the lack of anything interesting to look at, the sole focus is put on the combat which is very basic and with the four characters feeling so similar it will get tiresome. It never stops being fun however and it is only about an hour long. There just isn’t much to make this title stand out other than its crazy name. Music is decent and does have a few really catchy songs. Sound effects are good and make satisfying noise when you beat an enemy with whatever you happen to have in your hand, except the sub-machine gun which sounds very underwhelming.
When you finally do bite the dust in a fight there will be a small airstrike to damage the enemies and give you room for when you restart. If you use a continue you will receive a rocket launcher along with the airstrike to really bring the pain your enemies. It is rather funny to show up to a knife fight wielding a rocket launcher though it only has four shots so it won’t last long. Bosses are a lot of fun to fight and have multiple health bars that you need to deplete. Most are rather memorable, from a fat dual wielder cutting up a dinosaur to a desert brawl against a motorbike riding, grenade flinging gang member. These will be the main source of challenge and is pretty difficult to get through one without using a continue. That is largely due to unlimited respawning enemies when you fight a boss so it is a better strategy to ignore them and go straight for the boss because if the boss dies they all perish along with him. Landing the killing blow on the boss and watching them fly across the screen in slow-mo never ceases to be a great feeling. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is a fun game that doesn’t really do much wrong though it does little to stand out. With a crazy name like that you may be hoping for something memorable but in the end of the day it is your run of the mill beat ’em up that is good for a playthrough though I doubt you will be itching to replay it again anytime soon.
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